22nd Nov 2012 by 
The new federal health-care law by Obama administration has raised the stakes for hospitals and medical schools to train more doctors. Experts have warned there won’t be enough physicians to treat millions of people newly insured under this new law. An estimated shortfall of 150,000 doctors in coming 15 years will be seen.
There is also a pulse of new medical schools being open around USA and the remaining have increased there annual intake to cope up with the shortfall. Under the new law, new residency positions will also be added in the national pool to cope up with the shortfall.
IMGs are mostly filled in primary-care positions and are a great source to fulfill the shortfall of physicians.
This year’s US national residency match took place on March 16 in which more than 24,000 first-year positions were offered with a total increase of 2.55% since last year.
More than 11,000 international medical graduates took part in 2012 match of whom 43.9% matched, a decrease of 0.3% since last year.
More and more IMGs are taking USMLE every year to take part in US residency programs. But this won’t be evident until coming years that the percentage of IMGs accepted to residency programs will increase or decrease in USA as compared to US medical graduates!
